Oliver Stone to Direct Edward Snowden Film

Political thrillers are a tricky business as over the last ten years we haven’t seen many work. Sure, some of the best films of all time have dealt with the government and its machinations (like The Manchurian Candidateor All the President’s Men), but often in the guise of a genre picture. So it will be interesting to see how Oliver Stone tackles a film about Edward Snowden.

Because, as The Hollywood Reporter has revealed, Stone and his producing partner Moritz Borman have optioned the rights to Snowden’s story with the project likely to get off the ground before the end of the year. But where Stone has previously dealt in paranoid thrillers like JFK, this would be more in line with All the President’s Men (but also the more recent failure The Fifth Estate) in that it would follow Snowden as he became infamous for leaking NSA documents to The Guardian.

Stone has previously gotten the mainstream into movies that would normally come across as educational or preachy — which has made Stone seem like a modern day version of Stanley Kramer — but he was also able to tap into the dialogue of the time as his movies would often lead to long think pieces. The problem is that audiences have yet to react well to films about what’s been going on in America (or at least films that tackle modern problems head on) as no film about what’s been going on in Iraq or Afghanistan has been much of a hit. But perhaps Stone will find a good way into this material.

Damon worked in the film business as a Film Buyer for a theater chain for many years, which gives him an interesting perspective on the numbers. He's written for Collider, Chud, Screencrush, The DVD Journal and Binaryflix online, and was published by The New York Times and Willamette Week, along with his college, high school and middle school papers.